A jury awarded $289 million in damages Friday to a California school groundskeeper, finding that his cancer was caused by on-the-job exposure to a Monsanto Co. herbicide, the world’s most widely used weed killer.

Monsanto is responsible for Dewayne “Lee” Johnson’s illness, suffering and reduced life expectancy because of the cancer-causing nature of its product, glyphosate, most commonly marketed old as Roundup, the San Francisco Superior Court jury determined after a four-week trial.

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Dewayne “Lee” Johnson was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after regularly spraying fields with Monsanto’s glyphosate. The chemical, most commonly marketed as Roundup, has been classified by an international health advisory body as a likely cause of cancer in humans.

About 4,000 people nationwide claim in lawsuits that they were sickened by Roundup. Johnson’s case was the first to go to trial.

Monsanto Co. says it will appeal the verdict.

Company spokesman Scott Partridge said Friday that Monsanto sympathizes with Johnson and his family. But Partridge said hundreds of scientific studies and government agencies have concluded that its Roundup weed killer doesn't cause cancer.

Johnson, 46, of Vallejo, was a groundskeeper and pest-control manager for the Benicia Unified School District from 2012 until May 2016. His job included spraying glyphosate, in a high-concentration brand called Ranger Pro, from 50-gallon drums for two to three hours a day, 20 to 30 times a year.

He testified that he wore protective clothing, including a sturdy jacket, goggles and a face mask, but said he couldn’t fully protect his face from windblown spray. And twice, he told the jury, he got drenched with the herbicide, once when a spray hose became detached from a truck that was hauling it and another time when a backpack container he was carrying leaked.

After the first drenching in 2014, he said, he got rashes on his skin that did not respond to treatment. Welts and lesions soon appeared on his legs, arms, face and even his eyelids. He was first diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in October 2014, and with a more aggressive form of the cancer in March 2015.

Johnson has undergone chemotherapy and is considering a bone-marrow transplant. One of his doctors testified that Johnson is unlikely to survive until 2020. An oncologist testifying for Monsanto, who had not examined Johnson but looked at his medical records, said he might survive for decades.

Glyphosate, the world’s leading herbicide, was classified as a probable human carcinogen in 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization. Monsanto, now a subsidiary of Bayer, held the initial patent and remains its leading distributor.

Despite the agency’s health concerns, glyphosate remains legal in the U.S. and Europe. Monsanto’s lawyers noted that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had never found glyphosate to be a cause of cancer, and told the jury that both the EPA and European health regulators had conducted new studies after the international agency’s assessment and had reaffirmed their previous safety findings.

Johnson’s lawyers, in turn, accused Monsanto of mounting a propaganda campaign to discredit the international agency. Each side presented medical experts to support its case.

Monsanto also said none of Johnson’s physicians had determined the cause of his cancer. One of Johnson’s doctors testified, however, that as Johnson’s condition worsened in 2015, she asked the school district to let him stop spraying glyphosate. Johnson said he finally refused to use the chemical in January 2016, four months before leaving the job.

He also said he called Monsanto’s hotline twice, in 2014 and 2015, described his symptoms and asked if the herbicide might be the cause. Company representatives said someone would call him back, but no one did, he said.

The jury also heard from Johnson’s wife, Araceli Johnson, a nurse practitioner who said she now works 14 hours a day at two jobs to pay the bills. The couple has two children.